Left: ‘Home-Office‘ by Sculpt(it)                Right: ‘Container City‘ by Urban Space Management

Most of the examples of container architecture are either housing or office. However there are also many other uses of containers like as restaurants, exhibition spaces, museums, shops etc., which can also benefit from the portability of the container construction.

Left: ‘Puma City‘ -mobile shopping store-by LOT-EK       Right: ‘Muvbox‘ Fast Food Restaurant

Shipping container city, Cholula, Mexico

Created by a comunity of bussinesses, the shipping container city in Mexico is composed of 50 standard shipping containers on a 4500 squaremeter land featuring restaurants, galleries, bars, shops and housing. It stands out with the open spaces (courtyards, terraces and streets) created by the decent organization of the containers.

Cop15 Pavillion,  Copenhagen, Denmark

The latest example that reminded us of the containers, was the Cop15 Pavillion that was designed by Danish Architects MAPT for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen. The sustainability was achieved by upcycling the shipping containers for construction, and using the surplus products from the wood and wind-turbine industries for the interior space. The pavillion housed an interactive exhibition focusing on urban sustainability.

Although the modular arrangement enables the designer to create various compositions, the container architecture is still limited with the cubicalness of the component. However the designers are now exploring the further potentials of the containers either by detaching and rearranging the pieces or by using parametric softwares to generate different compositions . Here are some student projects displaying these different approaches in container architecture:

‘Duplo’ by Radek Stach, IaaC 2008-2009, Self-Sufficient Buildings Studio

‘Exhibiton Space’ by Asli Aydin, METU 2009-2010, CompArch Program

A group of academic and professional designers, named as BIOS collective, designed an algorithmic surface with grasshooper and built that surface with upcycled plastic cups.  It is a nice example combining parametric approach and use of waste materials in architecture.

The installation was designed as a canopy for a cafe in San Francisco in september 2009; and according to what the designers say, the cost of the structure was less than the expenses of the party they held under the canopy. They also made similar installations  for interior spaces, which can be seen on their blog.

The parametric surface was outlined with a steel cable mesh first, and the cups were assembled on these cables with lasercut polypropylene pieces. Those pieces,which were unique for each joint,  made it possible to create the algorithmic pattern as it was designed on grasshopper.

american firm rocker lange architects recently created ‘urban adapter’ for the hong kong
and shenzen bi – city biennale.

the proposal was for a contemporary city bench which seeks to understand the concept
of street furniture as a holistic design problem.

the project is based on a digital parametric model. at its core the model utilizes explicit
site information and programmatic data to react and interact with its environment.
that way the model’s DNA structure is capable of producing a variety of unique furniture
results. together they generate an endless family of new urban bench furniture.

rather than having a fixed form the members of the family can adapt to different site
conditions and programmatic needs.

while all of the designs have the ability to serve as a seating element, some have additional
programmatic values added, such as recycling containers, flower buckets or billboards
serving for advertisement or educational purposes.

http://rhinodersleri.com

This is a lamp designed by Asli and Gokcen (with Burak Kilic) and fabricated by laser cutter. It was designed as an assignment for the digital fabrication course directed by Marta Malé-Alemany at IaaC ( Institue for Advanced Architecture of Catalunya). The design is a light-bulb-holding piece for a laser cut lamp installation which was composed of 9 different types of distorted pipes. This T-shaped pipe was first modelled in Rhino and distorted by bounding box.

The model was contoured to obtain sections, and then those sections were prepared accordingly to be assembled in an interlocking manner. 90cmx90cm plywood sheet was used to build the model.

It was combined with 19 other laser cut pipes, 9 of which had light-bulbs, creating an unpredictable unity.